Care Forum Wales boss says lessons must be learnt after High Court ruling
The head of the organisation overseeing care homes in Wales has lessons must be learned on why people who may have had Covid were discharged into care homes during the pandemic.
This week the High Court ruled that the government acted unlawfully by discharging untested hospital patients into care homes during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The case was brought by Dr Cathy Gardner and Fay Harris whose fathers, Michael Gibson and Donald Harris, died after testing positive for coronavirus.
In a ruling on Wednesday, Lord Justice Bean and Mr Justice Garnham said that policies contained in documents released in March and early April 2020 were unlawful because they failed to take into account the risk to elderly and vulnerable residents from non-symptomatic transmission of the virus.
The ruling applies in England.
But Mario Kreft MBE, the chair of Care Forum Wales, said he could not imagine it would be different anywhere else because similar policies were adopted across the UK.
“There will now be a public inquiry and the important thing now is that we don’t focus on apportioning the blame but that we learn lessons so that this never happens again,” he said.
“We had not had a global pandemic for 100 years and it is clear that we were ill-prepared, not just here but around the world. It’s clear that some of the judgement calls, although well-intentioned, were based on false assumptions.
“It appeared to the care sector that it was counter-intuitive that people who may well have had Covid were being discharged to places where there was no Covid, sadly in some instances with catastrophic consequences.
“We were very clear at the time that it didn’t seem like a good idea which is why Care Forum Wales advised its members to go into lockdown three weeks ahead of being told to do so by the government.
“At the time plans were being made for potential a huge losses of life and understandably the governments of the UK and Wales prioritised clearing hospital beds.
“It’s fair to say that older people may not have been given the consideration they should have been given.
“Because we did not then have a proper testing regime, it was inevitable that infected people were going to spread the virus. Once Covid got into a care home it was virtually impossible to control.
